Tag: training plan

I’ve finished it. During the Build Me Up training plan, I did have my fair share of doubts that I’ll ever say that sentence. It was challenging, mainly because of my stupidity, nonetheless, I’ve fought hard in the second phase to stay with it.

The thing is, I’ve probably never had higher TSS load than 500 in a week (excluding the looong rides around Lake Balaton, but those are low intensity, and usually followed up by a multiple days of rest). As you can see the graphs below, I’ve successfully pulled in one week with 879 TSS when I’ve done Gym training, treadmill running AND the BMU. After that, I simply had to skip the GYM and treadmill. It was too much.

TSS per week load during BMU

In the end I’ve had a feeling that I’m stronger than at the start, mainly because I did hope that will be result after all ( 😉 ), and because I wasn’t dieing every second day of the workouts. Week 10 and 11 were monsters, pulling off nasty tricks to keep my “entertained”. Be prepared, when the coach says these are tough weeks – than these really are tough weeks…

Before I share my FTP result, let’s speak about my starting point of FTP. It was false. I’ve set 275 W as FTP in Zwift because my Garmin measured that outside, but it was measured at the start of summer (June) when I was in training. After that, I’ve had 3 weeks of forced rest due to an injury (hey, do not fall off from your bike on rough surface, okay?), and August went by mainly with low-middle intensity rides. According to an expert after watched my videos at the start of the plan (end of phase one), my FTP was probably around 265. My guess was 260 max, but I didn’t bothered to do an FTP test beforehand (always do an FTP test beforehand!). So my struggle during those Unicorn workouts, and the VO2Max workouts was mainly because a.) these are supposed to hurts and b.) I’ve had my FTP set tad higher than it is.

So, with that in mind, I’ve started the MAP (Maximum Aerobic Power) test after I’ve done some rest /easy freeride days (video at the end with my test). Why the MAP? First of all, I hate the 20 minutes FTP test. Like, really… Secondly, in the Zwift Hungary – Official Fb group we are promoting the MAP test as a test where you don’t have to suffer that long, and can get a precise enough result out of the one minute maximum power, and I wanted to try the test what I did promoted to the others in the group. One guy created two customer workout file, one for higher FTP one for lower FTP, and we are calculating 72% of the one minute power, because based on real world data / experience, 72% is closer to the real FTP than the universally accepted 75% and we don’t want to overshoot the FTP after the test (after all, I did it just a few weeks ago, and it was horrendous to do the workouts with higher than real FTP).

The test went well, I did an extra 20 minutes easy ride to warm up my knees (the left one developed a slight…well, not pain, rather discomfort in the last weeks, so I thought it’s a good idea to give it another couple of minutes to get it going. The first handful of minutes went by peacefully doing the steps, but after a while, I’ve started to feel the load climbing up, and suddenly I’ve noticed my lungs / heart working hard to keep up! I mean, that was the expected effect, it was just funny how sneaky it happened! And when it turned really anaerobic, legs started to burn, but the pedals were still turning, so no point to stop! I knew I was on the right path when I saw my heart rate – highest in the past 3 months 🙂

Than suddenly it was like pedaling in thick mud, my legs didn’t turn, I couldn’t convince them to speed up above 70 RPM, so time to stop, and catch my breath. And bio! My breath was evasive! I needed a minute to raise my head, I was expelled in the test! Although, as expected, it was a much more comfy feeling than the 20 minutes FTP test.

And the surprise: my FTP turned out at 300W (298.5, but I gave that 1.5 watts to myself to have it at 300 🙂 It sounds cool )! That means, I’ve gained at least 25 watts compared to 275, but in reality, it was closer to 35-40 watts of gain during the 3 months! Awesomesouce! Of course, it was the first structured and executed plan for me after years of “biking happily around” , so I expect it was a one time “jump” in my FTP. Nonetheless -> happy bunny here!

We already discussed in the group where to go after that. Probably I’ll redo the BMU training plan, because I miss the Unicorns, and I miss 17 videos from my playlist of BMU workouts XD Anyhow, January of 2019 – another round of BMU with my now-measured FTP!